Oh, I readily admit that I am prone to mistake, and not particularly a great (or even good) communicator.
Being admonished will NOT feel good to these people (or to anyone else); we cant simply see someone get his nose out of joint (or imagine it) and somehow induce that the original commenter was being unkind, uncivil, unloving, in violation of James, etc. Thats why some other FReepers (and I, frankly) were starting to wonder whether you were confusing love, gentleness, and kindless (which are Godly and Biblical) with being nice (which is not).
Being admonished doesn't feel good; especially if it steps on the ego.
Like I've said upthread: I was not addressing the author's failings/misconceptions/faulty-reasons, but rather what I perceived as wholesale dismissal of ALL the points the author did bring up due to their use of the LGBQ term. (A term I loathe, btw.) I've had a lot of encounters with authoritarians of various sorts and this is one common method to shut someone down: jump on any imperfection [or technicality] and use that to dismiss everything else; probably to the point where I am oversensitive to it. (Another fun technique authoritarians use to shut you down is to dismiss you if you show emotion [because you're not rational], and to dismiss you if you dispassionately/logically make your case [because it's obviously not important enough for you to be emotionally invested].)
No, thats true: you didnt explicitly call a retreat, or ask for explicit Gospel-lite... but you *did* say that those who called the author out for his gay-friendly, selfishness-laden article were running afoul of the Letter of St. James, and you *did* assume that the FReepers who were calling out the obvious selfishness-laden and politically-liberal-laden article had no interest in calling back these sinners... and I dont see how you could assume that reasonably.
You are right, it was more unreasonable than reasonable on my part; for that I do apologize.
I read and re-read their posts, and they said nothing except criticisms of the ARGUMENT and the (rather obvious) ATTITUDE and WORLDVIEW BEHIND the argument. One commenter said that such people were heading for hell, unless they repent (and what reasonable person could argue with that?).
I don't disagree that people are running headlong into hell; but shouldn't this deeply sadden us?
Meant to ping you on #106.
That is a misperception. What I posted is: 'In his [sic] second to last sentence ["groups that Christians have traditionally ostracized LGBTQ persons, unwed parents"] he tips his hand - we're leaving church because it speaks against sin. [...] His use of the P.C. term "LGBTQ" makes clear to me that by "ostracized" he means "identified their sins as sins."' It was more than the use of a term, and more than that group of sinners, at issue.